Sweden blasts called 'terror crime'

Two blasts that shook a busy shopping street in central Stockholm are being investigated as terror crimes in what appeared to be a suicide bombing, officials said Sunday. It would be the first such attack in the nordic country.

Police would not comment on a motive for the Saturday attack, which left the apparent bomber dead and two people slightly injured.

But a Swedish news agency said it received an email threat just before the blast in which the writer claimed to have visited the Middle East "for jihad," and referred to the country's soldiers in Afghanistan and a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that outraged the Muslim world.

The terror threat alert in the Nordic country is not being raised from its current elevated level, although police are investigating the attacks as "a crime of terror," police spokesman Anders Thornberg told reporters.

"When we go through the existing criteria and the series of events that occurred it fits well within the description of a terror crime," Thornberg said. He declined to elaborate.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt described the attack as "a most worrying attempt at a terrorist attack." Bildt commented in a Twitter message that it "failed,but could have been truly catastrophic."

Thornberg did not confirm local media reports that the man who died had explosives strapped to his body. He also would not say if the man was a suspected suicide bomber as widely reported by Swedish media, but added that police have "a totally clear picture about that" but were not sharing the information.

He said there were no indications so far that other people were involved.

"If this is a suicide bomber, then it's the first time in Sweden," he told The Associated Press.

In the incident that rattled normally peaceful Stockholm, a car exploded near the shop-lined, pedestrian-only street Drottninggatan in a burst of flames, causing panic among Christmas shoppers.

Shortly afterward, a second explosion hit higher up on the same street. Witnesses reported seeing a man lying on the ground afterward with blood appearing to come from his abdomen.

The exploded car contained gas canisters, rescue workers said.

Ten minutes before the blasts, Swedish news agency TT received an email saying, "the time has come to take action." According to the news agency, the email referred to Sweden's silence surrounding artist Lars Vilks's 2007 drawing of Muhammad as a dog and to its presence in Afghanistan, where it has about 500 soldiers in the NATO force.

"Now your children, daughters and sisters shall die like our brothers and sisters and children are dying," the news agency quoted the email as saying.

According to TT, the man said he visited the Middle East "for jihad," but that he could not tell his wife or child about it.

"I never went to the Middle East to work or to earn money, I went there for jihad," the agency quoted the email.

Police said they were aware of the email, which had also been addressed to Sweden's security police, but couldn't immediately confirm a link to the explosions.